Semiconductor lamps, in particular multi-faceted reflector lamps, usually include a housing which has a cavity in the interior, as well as a light fixture received in the cavity, in particular an LED arranged on a printed circuit board, and a driver for the light fixture.
It is known to provide components of the driver with an encapsulation. During this so-called “potting” the corresponding components are encapsulated more or less by means of an encapsulation material. The potting or the encapsulation of the driver generally takes place in such a way that the driver is inserted into the cavity and subsequently the encapsulation material is introduced. This takes place before the light fixture, a printed circuit board having the light fixture, and the lens are attached or inserted. The aforementioned components are mounted on the semiconductor lamp in subsequent manufacturing steps. Such an encapsulation method is known for example from WO 2010 145 925 A1.
A disadvantage of this method is that, from necessity, the light fixture, the printed circuit board having the light fixture, and the lens can only be arranged on the semiconductor lamp after the introduction of the encapsulation material. Consequently it is not possible to electrically connect the light fixture printed circuit board and the driver before the installation in the cavity, which, however, has proved advantageous with regard to the process for manufacture of semiconductor lamps.
Furthermore, it is known to encapsulate the driver with material before the driver is introduced into the cavity of the housing. Such methods also designated as “pre-potting” are known inter alia from US 2016/215934 A1 and WO 2015 028 404 A1. However, this has the disadvantage that for the encapsulation an additional molding tool is necessary in which the driver must be inlaid in a preceding intermediate step, encapsulated and removed again.